


call it what you want to

by mikaylawrites



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Post-Series, Pre-Series, season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikaylawrites/pseuds/mikaylawrites
Summary: These flowers are undoubtedly some strange Joshism that will take her another full year to puzzle out, but she’s no longer sure they’re the mean-spirited jab she initially assumed they were.Donna has a complicated relationship with April fourth.
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 10
Kudos: 106





	call it what you want to

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fascinated by the idea of Josh making a big deal of their "anniversary" every year, and I wish we could've seen it more than once on the show. Here's my take on three very different April fourths. Title is from Taylor Swift's "Call It What You Want"

**April 4, 1999**

When Donna first sees the flowers on her desk, she thinks they might be from the congressional aide she went to dinner with last Thursday. It’s a little odd that he would have sent her flowers after one date that didn’t go terribly well, but she’s had stranger encounters with men in this city. She sets her purse down and grabs the card off of the vase, flipping it open. The name she finds is even more confusing than her initial guess. 

“Josh?” she calls, already walking toward his office. 

He doesn’t look up from the budget report he’s reading. “Huh?”

“Why did you send me flowers?”

Now his head snaps up. “You don’t know?”

“If I knew, why would I ask?”

“I can’t believe you don’t remember,” he says with a growing smirk, and Donna briefly wonders if she’s on _Candid Camera_. Sensing her confusion, he continues. “It’s our anniversary.”

The wheels are starting to turn in her mind, but they’re not quite getting anywhere yet. Josh remembers dates better than anyone she knows; it’s completely unlike him to be off by two whole months. She thinks back to the day of her actual anniversary, remembers hoping that he might at least acknowledge the occasion and pretending not to be disappointed when he didn’t.

Josh is still smirking, and she feels an increasingly familiar urge to wipe that look off his face. “I started working for you in February,” she tells him.

“Well yes, you did _start_ working for me in February. But then, if you’ll recall, you stopped working for me on March seventeenth and it wasn’t until April fourth that you showed up in my office again. Understandably, this left me with a little bit of anniversary whiplash, so I chose to celebrate the day that began our continuous working relationship, one that has not been interrupted by you going back to your freeloader of an ex-boyfriend.” 

He may as well have thrown a glass of water in her face. She had assumed that, after his uncharacteristically gracious reaction to her return, they would just never speak of it again; apparently she was wrong. 

She gapes at him, struggling to form words. “How can you be so...”

“Thoughtful? Magnanimous?”

“Mean!”

“How am I the mean one here?” he shoots back. “You’re the one that left me. Wouldn’t you say that’s mean?”

Donna doesn’t miss his choice of words. He could have said she left the campaign, or that she left, period. But what he said is that she left him. She suddenly wonders if her leaving meant more to him than losing an assistant. In the past fourteen months, she’s learned more about her boss than she knows about some of her relatives. She knows about his sister, knows that loyalty is not just a political tactic to him. Beneath his brash exterior is the man who let her come back to work after a painful, embarrassing breakup and didn’t say a single word about it for an entire year. These flowers are undoubtedly some strange Joshism that will take her another full year to puzzle out, but she’s no longer sure they’re the mean-spirited jab she initially assumed they were. 

And so, instead of firing back a retort that would only serve to rile them both up, she huffs, setting her face with exaggerated annoyance. “You have senior staff in ten, and then you need to leave for your meeting with Congresswoman Frost,” she tells him before turning on her heel and stalking out of his office. 

“You’re welcome,” he yells after her.

When Josh gets back from the Hill in the early afternoon, he sticks his head into the bullpen to ask if she wants to order lunch. They eat at his desk, falling into an easy rhythm of her ribbing him about his scorched burger and him whining about her stealing his fries. She lets the flowers sit on her desk for the rest of the week and neither of them mention it again. 

**April 4, 2006**

It’s raining in Philadelphia. The walk from the parking lot into the hotel is enough to leave Donna feeling waterlogged, and her leg throbs from the damp cold that’s followed them across the country for the past week. She has to be up and ready again in seven hours and there’s still work to be done tonight and she’s so bone-tired that she almost forgets what day it is. Almost. 

The Santos campaign just left Philadelphia - literally; the two busses crossed paths on the highway less than ten minutes ago. Now, in the hotel lobby Donna swears she gets a whiff of Josh’s cologne. She hasn’t come face to face with him since before Super Tuesday, but they’ve been in and out of the same hotels for the past month and tonight that’s enough to get in her head. 

Donna moves along with the hoard of people from the Russell campaign who are all queuing at the front desk to check in. When it’s her turn, she gives the clerk her name. 

“Donna Moss?” the clerk asks again after handing her the key to her room, and when Donna nods he tells her, “there’s something here for you.”

He ducks down beneath the desk and Donna feels hot bile climb up her throat because she knows that he’s going to set a vase full of flowers in front of her before he does. The flowers are beautiful - whatever else they may be, they’re alway beautiful - and there’s no card with them; there doesn’t need to be anymore.

She must stare for longer than she means to because she feels a hand on her shoulder, hears Will ask, “Donna, are you all right?”

For a moment, she panics. Would Will know what today is? No, she tells herself, of course he wouldn’t. Most of her and Josh’s antics existed on a different frequency than the rest of the world. 

“Who are those from?” Will asks, confirming her suspicion. 

Donna scrambles to think of an answer. “Oh, they’re from my mother,” she says weakly. “For Easter.” 

If Will questions her explanation, he doesn’t say so. Donna waits for him to check in and they walk to the elevator together. She’s pulling her suitcase with one hand, awkwardly carrying the vase under her other arm. They make small talk about the upcoming primary and she hopes he doesn’t catch onto the fact that she’s been knocked completely off kilter. 

They bid each other goodnight and the moment the door shuts behind her, she loses any semblance of control she had. She sets the vase on the dresser next to the tv and drops onto the bed, her face in her hands. “God dammit,” she mutters, feeling tears prick the corners of her eyes. “God fucking dammit.”

Of course this would be the thing that breaks her. The long periods of radio silence broken by awkward, stilted conversations in elevators were painful, yes, but it never felt like anything they couldn’t come back from eventually. It’s this, an arrangement of roses and lilies left for her in Philadelphia, that leaves her wondering if their relationship can ever truly be repaired. For the first time since the day she walked out of the west wing, Donna allows herself to cry. 

She briefly considers calling him. It might be cathartic, she thinks, to rip him a new one, to let him know how unprofessional this is, not to mention vindictive. But there’s another, less logical part of her that wants to call him just so she can hear his voice. If she could only ask him about his day, tell him about hers, it might soothe this savage ache in her chest

Of course, she doesn’t do that. Instead, she goes to the bathroom and strips off her damp clothes. She stands under the scalding spray of the hotel shower until her skin is pink and her eyes are puffy and burning. After she brushes her teeth and downs four ibuprofen, she digs through her suitcase to find the Harvard sweatshirt she definitely should not have anymore, crawls into bed, and doesn’t sleep.

**April 4, 2007**

Donna sits at her desk, eyes occasionally darting away from her computer, reflexively looking for a vase of flowers that isn’t there. She’s not sure what she expected to happen today - even less sure of what she wanted to happen - but somehow this isn’t it. After last year she anticipated, well, something. Anything. But the only time she hears from him all day is a text around three that reads: _Home early tonight. Chinese?_ She responds with a quick _yes_ and puts her cellphone back in her bag, an inexplicably sick feeling settling in her stomach as she goes about the rest of her afternoon.

Later, they’re lying on the couch watching the Mets game, empty takeout containers on the coffee table. She’s draped over him, one of her legs between his, and he’s running his fingers along the notches of her spine. It’s rare that they’re both home this early. Maybe she should just let this thing go and enjoy the night. She’s in the middle of debating with herself when Josh surprises her by speaking first.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” He cranes his neck a little so he can look at her. “You’ve been quiet all night and you’re watching this game without a single complaint. Something’s up.”

There’s such a gentle concern in his voice that for a moment she considers lying and dropping it completely, but she won’t hide herself from him. Not anymore. 

“Did you forget?” she asks, fingers nervously playing with the hem of his t-shirt. 

Because he’s Josh, he knows exactly what she means. His hand stills on the small of her back. “Our anniversary?” She nods. “I didn’t forget, but I wasn’t sure if it was something you wanted to remember.”

“It felt weird, not to acknowledge it at all.”

“I knew you hated me making a big thing out of it, even when you worked for me. I definitely didn’t think you would want me to do it now that you’re Chief of Staff,” he says, then tilts his head slightly. “Are you upset that I didn’t send you flowers?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m just…” she trails off because, honestly, she doesn’t know what she is. “Never mind.”

“You can tell me.” His voice is soft, coaxing. 

“I guess I just thought, after last year...”

“Last year I was an asshole who didn’t know how to deal with his feelings like an adult.” He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear and she sees her pain from the previous year mirrored in his eyes. “I sent you those flowers to try to communicate something I was too stupid to realize I felt, but I also knew they would hurt you. I’m sorry for doing that to you.”

Wherever she thought this conversation was headed, this is definitely not it. She feels her eyes begin to well up and she buries her face into the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply and letting herself be calmed by the familiar scent of his skin. 

Josh tightens his grip on her waist. “Donna, I -”

“It’s okay,” she murmurs, comforting herself as much as him. “We’re okay now.”

“I’m not going to send you flowers on a fake anniversary when we have real anniversaries to celebrate.” She nods into his shoulder. “You know, I always told myself that the flowers were a little bit of good-natured gloating, but I really just wanted the excuse to flirt with you.”

“You were trying to flirt with me?” she asks, wanting the satisfaction of making him say it again.

“Believe it or not, many of my finest moments have been misguided attempts to flirt with you.”

“Joshua,” her head pops up and he groans at the grin spreading across her face, “did you have a crush on me?” 

“Donna…”

“Oh my God, you had a crush on me!” She takes his face in both hands, squishing it a little. “That’s so embarrassing for you.”

He’s trying his best to look annoyed, but his eyes are warm and his palms are sliding up her rib cage. “Yes Donatella, I had a big, fat crush on you. Still do, in fact, and now I can actually do something about it.”

Then, without warning, he flips them so that he’s hovering above her. She squeals, winding her arms around his neck and pulling him closer. They’re both laughing and breathless and when he starts kissing down her neck, she thinks that this is her favorite April fourth yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I've really dropped the ball on responding to comments on my other stories, but this time I will be better!


End file.
